


a little foolishness and a lot of curiosity

by JenTheSweetie



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, M/M, Post-The Last Jedi, Some Fluff, Some angst, also people get high, legalize spice
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-24
Updated: 2018-04-24
Packaged: 2019-04-27 04:06:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,361
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14417322
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JenTheSweetie/pseuds/JenTheSweetie
Summary: “Everybody else got a room already,” Poe says.  “It’s fine, buddy, put your stuff down, it’s not like you’re going anywhere, right?”Poe smiles as he says it, like the answer’s a sure thing, and Finn smiles back automatically.“Sure,” he says, and drops his bag.Finn settles in with the Resistance and experiences spicy food, skinny dipping, building a campfire, and other firsts (plus one that's also a last).





	a little foolishness and a lot of curiosity

**Author's Note:**

> Title lifted from a quote from George Bernard Shaw. Thanks for hanging out in this lovely little fandom with me.

“Which room do you want?” 

The question should be simple.  “What?”

Poe slides open the first door and peers inside.  “It’s up to you.  Got a preference?”

Finn opens the second door.  The room inside has a low, slanted ceiling, like the hallway, and a single window, set high in the far wall above the bed.  A shaft of dusty-looking light crosses the room and strikes the floor right at Finn’s feet.  

“Uh,” Finn says, “this one, I guess.  Unless you - ”

“Works for me,” Poe says.  BB-8 rolls past him into the other room and beeps.  “Yeah, yeah, I know it’s dirty, buddy.  You wanna clean it?  No?  Didn’t think so.”

The sprawling old house that Leia found for them is big, and rundown, and most of all dusty.  It’s clear nobody’s lived here for years, but compared to the Falcon it’s luxury: an actual kitchen, big windows, dozens of little rooms tucked into cobwebbed corners.  The general had taken one on the ground floor, and the rest of the Resistance had filed into spaces on the second and third stories, until it was just Finn and Poe climbing the last little staircase up to the attic and the three doors lining its small hallway.  

Poe opens the third door to reveal a fresher.  He plays with the knobs on the sink until they start gurgling.  “We have water,” he says proudly, like he’s personally responsible for the fact.

It’s quiet; Finn thinks he should be able to hear the sounds of the twenty people below him, spread out amongst their rooms, unpacking their meager possessions, shaking dust out of blankets, but all he can hear is the water in the pipes.  “You sure nobody else needs this room?” He’s standing in the middle of the floor, watching motes of dust drift by.  The sun’s starting to set, and the light has gone orange-red.  “I don’t need a whole - I mean, I’ve never had my own - I could sleep on a sofa, or something.”

“Everybody else got a room already,” Poe says.  “It’s fine, buddy, put your stuff down, it’s not like you’re going anywhere, right?”

Poe smiles as he says it, like the answer’s a sure thing, and Finn smiles back automatically.

“Sure,” he says, and drops his bag. 

  
  
  
  


It’s the middle of the night, but Finn isn’t surprised when he hears the door across the hall slide open, the creak of footsteps, and then, softly, through the crack in the door, “Finn?  You asleep?”

“No,” Finn says.  

The door slides open slowly, and Poe peers in, just an outline in the darkness.  “Wanna go swimming?”

Finn’s wide awake, but he thinks he’s misheard.  “What?”

“I’m going down to the lake,” Poe whispers.  “Come with me?”

“Okay,” Finn says, without really thinking about it.  He swings his legs out of bed and shoves his feet into his boots, pulls on the shirt he left folded neatly on the bedside table.  

In the hallway, Poe’s leaning against the wall.  “You got a towel?” 

“No,” Finn says, and goes back for it, and then he’s following Poe down the steps and through the house, past the hallways of closed doors, out the back door and into the moonlight.  They’re quiet until they reach the tree line, and then Poe breaks into a run, crashing through the knotted underbrush and avoiding the occasional boulder.

Finn stares for a second and then runs after him.  The night air is cool after the stuffy attic bedroom, pleasant even once it starts burning in his lungs, and eventually a clearing opens up to reveal a shimmering lake.  Moonlight bisects the glassy water, and Finn can see insects hovering just above the surface.

“Wow,” he says, slowing to a stop next to Poe.

“Nice, right?” Poe says.  He toes off his shoes, then yanks off his shirt and drops it in the dirt.

“Found it on my flyover last week.”  

“I kind of thought you were joking,” Finn says, watching as Poe unzips his fly and steps out of his pants.  “About swimming.”

“So what’d you think you were running through the woods with a towel for?”  Poe strips off his briefs and balls them up, then pads toward the edge of the lake.  “Think it’s gonna be cold?”

“Probably,” Finn says, distracted.  Finn’s used to seeing people naked - in the freshers and the barracks, underneath him in bed on the nights when the troopers knew the on-duty patrolman would look the other way - but it feels a little different, somehow, out in the woods in the middle of the night with nobody else around.  He watches Poe jog toward the water, getting faster as he gets closer, and by the time he splashes in he’s full-out sprinting, the water crashing around him as he makes it in up to his thighs and then dives, head first.

He breaks through the surface a few feet deeper in.  “It’s fucking freezing!” he yells, and Finn laughs and hurries out of his own clothes, almost tripping over his pants in his rush.  

“Maybe I should just stay out here, if it’s so cold,” Finn says, nudging a rock toward the edge of the lake with his foot. 

Poe pushes his sopping curls back from his face.  “I’ll throw you over my shoulder and drag you in if I have to.”

“You wouldn’t.”

“You sure you want to take that risk?”  Poe’s grinning now, standing chest-deep in the cloudy water, droplets falling from his hair.  He lunges forward, as if to make good on his threat.

“Asshole,” Finn mutters, and steps in.  It _is_  fucking freezing.  Finn bites back a gasp as the cold water takes his ankles, his knees, his thighs, and then once the worst bit is over he leans forward and dives.  

Everything is suddenly silent; there’s just the icy chill down his spine and the rushing in his ears.  It’s different than swimming in his armor: water rushing in to fill every available space, weighing him down, forcing him to fight for every breath.  Swimming naked feels like floating in comparison, like flying.  

He pops his head out.  “It’s not so bad once you get moving.”

Poe paddles toward him.  “Wrong,” he says.  “So wrong.  I’m pretty sure my balls have gone into hibernation.”

Finn flicks water at him.  “You’re the one who wanted to go swimming in the middle of the night.”

“I’m the one who wanted to go _skinny dipping_  in the middle of the night.”

“We could’ve gone skinny dipping in the middle of the day.  There’s nobody around.”

Poe lifts a shoulder.  “Couldn’t sleep.”  

“Long day,” Finn agrees, and doesn’t say anything else, because he knows they’re both thinking of the piles of holopads back at the old, dusty house, filled with lists of names and consolation messages to whatever family those names might have left in the galaxy.  The Resistance was never much for record-keeping, even before the fleet was destroyed, so the survivors are doing their best with what they remember: _oh, what about_ , and _shit, did we get_  and _add her, add him, add them_.  Finn didn’t know any of them, couldn’t write personalized notes or sign his name, _sincerely, the ex-stormtrooper who helped get your loved one killed_ , so he brought caf and sorted data pads and maintained the list, long and getting longer.  It’s embarrassingly poor penance.   

Poe gazes across the lake.  “You ever think about,” he says, and then stops.  

“What?” Finn says.

“Nothing.”  

It’s not, so Finn says, quietly, “I do.  All the time.”

“Yeah.”  Poe blows out a breath.  “Me too.”

They’re treading water now; Finn can’t feel the bottom of the lake.  Poe’s hair is slicked back, except for one errant curl that’s plastered to his forehead.  Finn considers reaching out and tucking it back; considers letting his feet stop kicking, his hands stop churning.  Wonders how it would feel to slip back under the water, let it close in over his head.  

“Fuck, it’s cold,” Poe bursts out, so loud that it startles a laugh from Finn.  “Seriously, man, I’m freezing my ass off.  Race you back to shore?”

“You’re on,” Finn says, but Poe’s already swimming away.

  
  
  
  


“Try this,” Poe says, thrusting out a spoon.

“You’re… cooking?” Finn says, so dubiously that Rey snorts.   

“Yes, I’m cooking, what’s so unbelievable about that?” Poe says.  “Come on, tell me if you think it’s too spicy.”

He holds his hand under Finn’s chin, just barely tilting it up, and it’s so distracting that Finn’s already wrapped his lips around the spoon and swallowed before he thinks to ask, “What’s spicy?”

“What’s spicy?” Poe repeats blankly.  “What do you - oh.  Oh, shit.  Shit shit shit.  Maybe you guys had another word for it?”  He turns to Rey.  “Is there another word for spicy?”

“I’m not an expert in First Order slang,” Rey says.

“It tasted pretty good to me,” Finn says.  He blinks.  “A little, um.  Different.  It feels kind of like - hang on, is it really hot in here all of a sudden?”

“So,” Poe says, “the thing you’re feeling is spicy.”

“The thing I’m feeling is _pain_ ,” Finn says.  “What’s _in_  this?”

“Peppers.”  Poe gazes down sadly at his pot of stew.  “Definitely too many peppers.”  

Finn wipes at his brow.  “Peppers did this to me?  I thought they were a vegetable.  Vegetables are supposed to be harmless.  This is _food_?  Why would you _do_  this to me?“

Rey turns to Poe.  “Turns out there’s not another word for spicy.”

“I gathered,” Poe says.

“I’m dying,” Finn says.  “I escaped the First Order only to be killed by soup.”

“It’s not going to kill you,” Poe promises.  

“It _might_  kill you,” Rey says.

“That’s not helpful,” Poe says.  “Look, it’s just going to be, uh, mildly uncomfortable for a little bit.”

“ _Mildly uncomfortable_?” Finn says.  “Man, you lit my mouth on fire!”   

“Here.”  Poe slides a flagon in front of Finn.  “Drink.”

“Is it poison?  Are you helping me end it quickly?”

“It’s _water_ ,” Poe says.  “And it’ll help.  A little bit, at least.”

Finn downs the entire flagon in a few large gulps and drops his face into his hands.  “I’m never trying your cooking again.”

“That’s fair,” Poe says.

  
  
  
  


It isn’t their _worst_  crash - “It was a _hard landing_ ,” Poe says, affronted - and neither of them are hurt, but the ship’s grounded.

“Can’t you walk into a village or something?” Rey says over the commlink.

Finn watches Poe trample through the woods outside the ship, shielding his eyes so he can look up at the sky.  “Nearest one’s thirty klicks away, and Poe doesn’t want to leave the ship behind.”

“Guess you’ll be roughing it, then,” Rey says.  “Hope you’ve got your emergency rations.  No offense, but I can’t imagine you killing and roasting your own meat for dinner.”

Finn can’t imagine that either, so he says, “None taken. Sure you can’t make it here faster?”

“We’ll be there in a day,” Rey says.  “Just enough time for you to become a man of the woods.”

“What if I don’t want to become a man of the woods?” Finn grumbles, but Rey’s already disconnected. 

Poe, it turns out, is already a man of the woods.  By the time Finn’s dug out the ship’s emergency kit, Poe has gathered up a pile of wood and is aiming a blaster at it.

“What’d those sticks ever do to you?” Finn says.

“I’m building a fire,” Poe says, fiddling with the blaster’s setting.

“Uh huh,” Finn says.  “And what do we need a fire for?  We’ll be lucky if the temperature drops below boiling.”

Poe crouches down next to the wood pile and rearranges some of it.  “I don’t know, it’s just something you do when you’re camping, haven’t you ever been camping?”

“What exactly have you heard about the First Order that led you to believe they gave us vacations?” Finn says.  

“Well, okay,” Poe says, “but what about, I don’t know, survivalist training?”

“Never got the feeling they cared much about whether or not we survived,” Finn says.  

Poe frowns, then lifts his blaster, points it at the pile of wood, and pulls the trigger.  The center of the pile starts to smoke, then spark, and before Finn’s eyes it turns into a small but raging fire.

“Huh,” Finn says.  “That was actually kind of cool.”

“I have so much to teach you, Padawan,” Poe says.

Poe’s lessons involve gathering up more kindling for the fire, clearing away some rocks, and picking the juiciest berries from a prickly bush that Poe swears isn’t poisonous. “They’re a little sour,” Poe warns as Finn puts the first one in his mouth.  

His tongue twists under its tang.  “Acquired taste, I guess,” Finn says, swallowing, and Poe laughs and pops a whole handful.

By the time it gets dark, they’ve eaten half their rations and attempted, without success, to trap one of the small rodents that skitters by in the shadows.  

“Would you have been able to skin it and cook it and everything, if we’d actually caught it?” Finn says once they accept defeat.

“Nah,” Poe says cheerfully.  He kicks his legs out in front of him, and the emergency blanket they’re sitting on crackles.  “My dad and I used to go camping when I was a kid, and he’s a chronic overpacker, so I’d be carrying, like, a hundred pounds of sweet bread and trail mix for two and a half days in the woods.  I’d complain the whole first half of the trip, _I’m tired, my feet hurt,_ and then by the time we were going home, I’d complain that I wanted to stay longer.”  Poe shakes his head.  “No hunting, though.  He’d say, ‘Poe, there’s no need to disrupt anything in nature that you don’t need to survive.’  And considering that at given any time we had enough food with us to feed half the Resistance, we _definitely_  didn’t need to kill anything.  It was nice, though, all that time out there with him, just the two of us.  Not that I felt that way at the time, but now - I guess I get it.”

Poe’s leaning back now, looking at the stars, and Finn’s looking at Poe, and he’s gonna get caught if he’s not careful, so he says, “Can you see it?”

“What?” Poe says.

“Yavin 4.”  Finn nods at the sky.  

“Oh, sure,” Poe says.  He lays down on the blanket and points.  “Okay, so that bright red one, there?  That’s Dathomir.”

Finn scoots over, tries to follow his finger.  “That one?”

“No, to your left.”  Poe grabs his hand, points it higher up.  “See?”

“I think?”

Poe slides closer.  His palm is warm, his fingers curving gently against the back of Finn’s hand, nudging Finn’s into place.  When he shifts, his cheek brushes Finn’s.  “Okay, so there’s Dathomir, right?  And then Yavin 4,” Poe says, moving their twined fingers upwards, “is there.”

“Cool,” Finn says.  If he turned his head to the side, he’d be able to press his lips to Poe’s jaw.  “It’s, uh.  Far.”

“Not too far,” Poe says.  “Couple jumps.  It’d take a couple days from here, maybe.”

The sky’s bigger out here than it is back at the base, much bigger, somehow, than it ever was back at Starkiller or on a Destroyer.  It’s all sky as far as Finn can see, sky and stars and Poe, breathing quietly next to him.

“I’d like to see it,” Finn says.  

“Yeah?” Poe says.  “I’ll take you some day.”

“You say that to everybody you take stargazing?” Finn says slyly.

Poe laughs and drops his hand.  “Only the ones I crash land with.”  The wind whistles through the trees, and Poe reaches down and pulls the other emergency blanket over both of them.  “You can get some sleep, if you want.  I’ll make sure the fire doesn’t go out.”

“Okay,” Finn says.  He feels warm, pressed shoulder to shoulder with Poe and the campfire at their feet.  “I’ll take next shift.”

“Sounds good, buddy,” Poe says, and Finn lets his eyelids fall shut.   

  
  
  
  


Finn’s only half awake in the pre-dawn darkness, and that’s why, he tells himself later, that’s the _only_  reason why he’s so surprised when he makes it to the hallway and sees somebody who definitely isn’t Poe coming out of Poe’s room.

“Oh,” the guy says, “hey.”

“Hi,” Finn says, his voice sleep-rough as the guy slides into focus.  Taller than Finn, bright shock of red hair - it’s one of the New Republic pilots who’d shown up the day before, a squadron that defected after the Hosnian system and wandered around the galaxy for a while before finally tracking down the Resistance.  He’d seen Poe talking to the guy the night before, but he hadn’t expected - 

And now Poe’s behind him, peering out from his room, and not, Finn notices unhelpfully, wearing a shirt.  “Morning,” he says shortly to Finn, and then turns to the guy - Talik, Finn’s mind finally supplies - and says, “See you later?”

“Yeah,” Talik says.  He claps a hand on Poe’s shoulder and nods to Finn, then disappears down the stairs.

Finn points to the fresher.  “I was just - ”

“Of course, all you - ”

Finn ducks through the door and slides it shut behind him, and by the time he’s back in the hallway Poe’s gone.

He sleeps for another hour or two, but it’s restless, and when he wakes again he stumbles into the shower to wash the bad night’s sleep away.  When he’s done, he opens the door to let the steam out and pulls out the shaving gel he shares with Poe, and he’s all lathered up before he hears the slide of a door.  

“Hey,” Poe says.

“Hey.”  He picks up his razor and stares at his reflection, taking his time deciding where to start.  He can see Poe in the corner of the mirror, leaning against the doorframe and looking at him. 

“Sorry if that was weird earlier,” Poe says.

“It wasn’t weird,” Finn says.  He slides the razor down his cheek, slowly, just the way Poe showed him.  It still feels strange not to be using a sonic, to instead drag sharp metal across bare skin, rinse it off, start again, but Finn likes the rhythm of it, the scent, all leather and clean soap.  It’s simpler than a lot of the other new things he’s had to learn.

“Talik and I knew each other back at the academy - he’s a couple years behind me, but we - ”

“It’s cool,” Finn says.  “I’m happy for you, man.”

“It’s not like that,” Poe says.  He shakes his head, laughs a little.  “It was just, you know, for old time’s sake.  He’s heading out today.  It’s not a thing.”

Finn draws the razor delicately across his chin.  “All right.”

“Just so you know,” Poe says.  Finn watches him in the mirror; he looks frustrated, a little angry, almost.  Finn can’t imagine why; if anyone has the right to be angry, it’s _Finn_.  Not that he’s angry.  There’s something in his stomach that feels a little bit like anger mixed with shame and hurt, all bundled together red-hot and scalding, and he decides, delicately, not to put a name to it.  

“Well, now I know,” Finn says, when it becomes clear that Poe isn’t going to say any more.  “See you down at breakfast?”

“Sure,” Poe says, and Finn leans down to splash water on his face until he’s sure Poe’s gone.

  
  
  
  


“Since when do you smoke?” Finn asks, settling himself on the steps of the porch.

Poe inhales, the cigarette’s tip glowing orange in the dusk.  “Since that last supply shipment had a little something extra packed away.  You ever tried spice?”

“It’s illegal,” Finn says.

“So’s the Resistance, technically,” Poe says.  He holds out the joint.  “It’s an ethically mined medicinal strain, for some value of ethical.  No slaves were harmed in the making of this high.”  

“How long does it last?”

“Couple hours,” Poe says.  “You’ll be fine by the time we leave tomorrow.”

Finn takes it from him and lifts it to his lips; he can feel Poe watching as he carefully inhales.  

“There you go,” Poe says, grinning lazily.  “They really don’t have it in the First Order?”

Finn takes another hit and suppresses a cough.  “Somehow I don’t think hallucinogenic drugs really fit with the whole ‘stamp out individuality and disorder’ thing they’ve got going on.”

“Yeah, they wouldn’t want you to get any crazy ideas about being your own person or anything.”

“Doesn’t really fit the overall theme,” Finn agrees.    

  
“You think if we smuggled Hux some of this, he’d be less of a tightass?”

“I think it would take more spice than they’ve got in the whole galaxy to get that guy to unclench,” Finn says.  He looks down at his hands.  They’re tingling, maybe.  “Should I be feeling it yet?  I don’t think I’m feeling anything.”

“Not feeling anything, huh?” Poe says.  “So that’s why you’ve been staring at your own hands for a full minute?”

Finn looks up.  “I was?”

“You were.”

“No way.”

“Yeah, mighta been two minutes, even.”

“Shut _up_.”

“Absolutely not,” Poe says, grinning.

“Well, glad to know I looked like an idiot.”

“Not at all,” Poe says.  “Actually it was really…”

“What?” Finn says.

“Nothing.”

“What were you going to say?” Finn says.  He pokes him.  “I get it, I look stupid.  It’s not going to hurt my feelings.  Poe.  I’m not going to stop poking you.  Poe!”

“Cute!” Poe says, shoving him away.  “I was gonna say _cute_ , all right?”

“That’s so much worse!”  Finn says, horrified.

“I know,” Poe says.  He shakes his head and lifts the joint to his lips; Finn watches his mouth curve around it.

“And anyway,” Finn says, “shouldn’t you only be saying stuff like that to _Talik_?”

Poe tilts his head back and lets the smoke waft out from between his lips.  “Knew I hadn’t heard the last of that.  It _wasn’t_  - ”

“Man, I’m just giving you a hard time,” Finn says.  

“But you know it wasn’t a - ”

“Yeah, I know,” Finn says.

“But _really_ ,” Poe says, leaning forward, “do you _know_?”

Poe’s eyes are wide and dark and _worried_ , and they’re looking at Finn like Finn’s the only thing in the whole galaxy.  “Uh,” Finn says.  “I can’t remember what I’m supposed to know.”

Poe wilts a little bit, then straightens up like he suddenly remembers Finn can still see him.  “I’ll explain some other time,” Poe says, waving a hand in a way that makes it clear that he definitely won’t.  

Finn takes the joint from his hand and inhales deeply, and it feels like a brushfire fire in his throat.  

“You’re probably good,” Poe murmurs distractedly.  He’s sitting very close to Finn; their knees keep bumping together on accident.  Everything’s moving slowly, like when you’re about to fall asleep and your thoughts go in loops.

“I thought this stuff makes you hallucinate,” Finn says around a yawn.  “I thought I’d be seeing, like, flying banthas or C-3PO wearing a dress or something.”

“You can see Threepio wearing a dress if you want,” Poe says.  “Just ask him.  He’ll put one on for you.”

“He wouldn’t,” Finn argues.

“Do you know that for _sure_?” Poe says, very seriously, and Finn giggles, and Poe does too, and his smile is the only bright thing in the deep blue nighttime.

“Hey,” Finn says, suddenly, “what do you think you’d be doing right now if there was no Resistance?”

Poe stubs out the joint carefully on the porch step.  “I’d still be in the New Republic fleet.  I’m a pilot.  I’m not anything else other than a pilot.”

“You’re more than a pilot,” Finn says.  “You’re a lot more than - ”

“I’m not, really,” Poe says, and there’s a sharpness to it that makes Finn flinch.  “What about you?  After all this is over and we’ve kicked the First Order’s ass and everything, what do you think you want to do?”

“I don’t know,” Finn says slowly.  “I’ve never really thought about it.”

“You could do anything you want,” Poe says, so confidently that Finn almost believes him, for a second.  “ _Anything_.”

The world tilts a little bit.  It takes Finn a while to realize that that’s not true; it is, in fact, _him_  who’s tilted a little bit.  It’s not until he takes stock of his whole body and feels the soft scratch of Poe’s jersey under his cheek that he realizes he’s settled his head on Poe’s shoulder.  

“Oh,” he says.  “Did I - ”

“You’re good,” Poe says softly.  

“Hey, Poe?” Finn says.

“Yeah, buddy?”

“I don’t mind you thinking I’m cute,” Finn says, his own voice coming from very far away.

“Well, that’s good,” Poe says.  “Because you don’t have much of a choice.” 

Finn thinks he should say something in response, but the words get lost on the way to his mouth and the world spins around him, so he just closes his eyes.  Poe breathes in and out, in and out, and time drags, and Finn is warm, and comfortable, and he’d be even more warm and comfortable if Poe was _closer_ , and -  

“I’m gonna go to bed,” Poe says.  He pulls away delicately, waits until Finn looks up at him and blinks.  “See you tomorrow?”

“Sure,” Finn says, and watches him go.

  
  
  
  


The pilots are on full communications blackout, which is why when Poe gets to the extraction point he has no idea C’ai Threnalli has been dead for two days.

He throws open the door, scruffy and unshaved and grinning as soon as he sees Finn.  “Hey, buddy,” he says, and then he looks around and starts, “where’s - ” and freezes.  

The grin goes brittle on his face, painful-looking; Finn doesn’t have to say anything at all.

“No,” Poe says.  He slams the door behind him, and Finn doesn’t flinch.  “ _No_.  When?”

“On the approach,” Finn says steadily.  

“No,” Poe says again.  “Fucking - no!  That’s - _fuck_.”  He slams his hand against the transparisteel door, and this time Finn flinches.  “Fuck.  Fuck!”  Each curse is accompanied by the sound of flesh on steel, first an open palm and then a fist.   

“We should never - have - come,” Poe says, his knuckles connecting with the door.  He’s furious, angrier than Finn has ever seen him, his face twisted into someone unrecognizable.

He’s hitting the door over and over and over, and Finn’s frozen across the room, useless, because he knows that this is about C’ai, C’ai who was Poe’s wingman, who Poe’s known for years, but it’s also about more than C’ai: it’s about every person they lost, every person _they_  lost, Poe and Finn specifically, _personally_ , hundreds of them, every person they failed and haven’t had time to grieve, every person they were trying to repay by being the spark that grew into a flame, a flame that’s dimmer, now, because they’ve lost another friend to a plan that didn’t work, another unwitnessed death in the vacuum of space.  

“Poe,” Finn says, because he can see the blood from his knuckles smeared against the door, “Poe, _stop_.”

“It - should - have - been - me,” Poe growls, and the sound of his fist on the door rattles inside Finn’s _skull_.

Finn crosses the room and grabs his arm, and Poe lunges at him, pulls back his other arm to swing and Finn’s ready to take it on the chin because that’s better than hearing it against steel again, but then Poe sags.  He falls, almost, tips forward and instead of connecting with his fist he collapses into Finn’s arms.

Finn catches him.  They stand very, very still.  At least one of them is shaking.

“It should’ve been me,” Poe says again, into Finn’s shoulder, his voice hollow.   

Finn doesn’t agree, but he stays silent.

“I’m sorry,” Poe says, finally.   

“Don’t be,” Finn says, and tightens his arms one time, a quick squeeze, before letting go.  Poe pulls back, flexing his fist and wincing, and Finn knows the feeling: pain flooding in once the adrenaline recedes.  “Let me - ”

“I’m fine,” Poe says, “don’t - ”

“Shut up, man,” Finn says, and luckily for both of them, Poe does.  He goes to the box of supplies and pulls out the paltry med kit, digs out a few things that look like they might be useful.  First aid: it’s on the long and ever-growing list of things he’s been meaning to learn about.  “Sit down?”

Poe looks like he’s about to argue, but Finn just raises his eyebrows, and Poe nods, folds down into the one hard-backed chair in the corner and puts his elbow on his knee, knuckles out.  There’s blood running down to his wrist, and when Finn wipes it away with a gauze pad Poe jumps.  

Finn pulls back, just long enough to let Poe settle, then starts again.  He’s slow and not particularly methodical; the blood doesn’t gush, but it does get in the way, and it takes him a minute to figure out how to get the bacta gel out of the tube so that none of it goes to waste.  “You think anything’s broken?” he asks, his eyes on Poe’s battered and already-bruising skin.

“Nah,” Poe says, and Finn doesn’t trust him, but he also doesn’t have any way to prove he’s lying.  Poe’s not watching the proceedings; if he has any comment on Finn’s style as a medic, he doesn’t share.  

“You should get some sleep,” Finn says.  

“I’m good.”

Finn wraps the bandage around Poe’s hand one more time, just for good measure, and then lets his hand drop away.  “Yeah, I’m sure you are, but you have to fly yourself out of here in six hours and I’d rather not fucking lose another friend today, all right?”

Poe looks up, startled, and Finn meets his eyes.

“All right,” Poe says.  “All right.”  He rises from the chair, stiffly, and Finn watches him make his way to the bedroll in the corner.  

Finn puts away the med kit and rummages through the rest of the supplies.  “You hungry?”  

“No,” Poe says, but when Finn hands him a rations bar he unwraps it and eats half of it in one bite.  Finn putters around the one-room shack until Poe’s lying down on the stiff bedroll, then flips off the light and settles himself down between Poe and the door, his legs splayed out in front of him and his back against the wall, a blaster at his hip.

“Let me see,” he says quietly, and Poe blinks at him and then holds out his hand.  Finn runs his thumb along the back of it, around the already-fraying edge of the bandage.  

“Thanks,” Poe says, and slides the tips of his fingers between Finn’s, threads them just to the first knuckle, so loosely that Finn could pull away easily, could pretend it’s not happening at all, if he wanted to.

“Course,” Finn says, and lowers their hands gently to the bedroll next to Poe’s head, and stays, silent and barely breathing, until he’s sure Poe’s fallen asleep.  

  
  
  
  


Murmurs rise up as the briefing ends, and Finn looks around just in time to see Poe slip into the corridor.  

“Excuse me,” Finn says, edging through the crowd.  “Sorry, I just need to - ”

The air crackles with determination, and everywhere he looks he sees set jaws and steady gazes; the Resistance is finally going to hit back.  They’re going to draw the enemy into the open and rouse the other rebels out of their hiding places all in one go.  

Finn makes it out of the dining hall they’ve turned into a command center, rounds a corner and hits the stairway at a run just as Poe disappears up the top of the steps.  He can hear footsteps clattering a floor above him, and the door between the hallway and Poe’s low-ceilinged room has just finished sliding shut when Finn grabs the handle and yanks it back open.

“You couldn’t have told me?” he bursts out.

Poe’s sitting on the bed, a go bag open on the floor in front of him.  He looks up warily.  “Mission protocol,” he says.  “Need to know only.”

“And I didn’t need to know,” Finn says.  “I get it.”

“Hang on - ”

“No, man, I really do!  It’s cool.  We’re using you as bait, and I found out in a briefing with fifty other people.  I get it.  It’s just,” Finn says, and presses his lips together.  “It’s just _sometimes_ , I think that maybe I mean something to you.”

Finn can’t read the look that crosses Poe’s face.  “You do,” he says quietly.  “Finn, of _course_  you - ”

“But I must not,” Finn continues.  “Because when people _mean something_  to each other, they tell each other things.  Things like, oh, hey, by the way, this mission I’m going on?  Odds are pretty good that I’m not coming back from it.”

Poe’s eyes flash.  “The plan makes sense, Finn.  This is the only way, we _have_  to - ”

“I’m not arguing with you about the plan, _fuck_ , Poe!”  Finn runs a hand through his hair.  “I understand the plan, I don’t like it but I get it, I see why we have to do it.  What I don’t see is why sometimes, I think you and me, we’re - I think there’s something here, something actually pretty great, but then you go and - ”

“Force, you want to do this _now_?” Poe bursts out.   

“Sorry, is another time better for you?” Finn snaps.  “After your suicide mission, maybe?  Yeah, man, I want to do this now, because based on what I heard down there, I don’t know if I’m going to get another chance.”  

“Finn, there’s no version of this that ends well,” Poe says.  “There’s only the version where I get killed, or I get _you_  killed, or maybe, if we’re _really_  lucky, we just end up hating each other, because I’m not somebody who comes out of all of this with a happy ending, okay?  There’s no version of me that deserves that.”

“Well, that’s fine,” Finn says, “because I don’t _want_  any other version of you.”

Poe shakes his head.  “You don’t know what you want.”

“No, man, that’s _you_ ,” Finn says.  “But if you figure it out, let me know, all right?”

Poe stands up, swings his bag onto his shoulder.  “I can’t do this right now.  I don’t want to fucking _fight_  with - ”

“Yeah, me neither,” Finn says.  

“Then why the _hell_  did you,” Poe starts angrily, and then cuts himself off.  “I gotta go.”

“Yeah, I know,” Finn says.  He holds out a hand, gestures at the door.  “You gotta go.”

Poe looks at him and it sucks all the air out of Finn’s lungs, and before Finn can get his breath back he brushes past Finn and he’s gone, and Finn waits as long as he possibly can before he leaves the room and slams the door shut behind him. 

  
  
  
  


Finn’s unit is first in and first out.  Their target was easy, the troopers more poorly trained than Finn expected, and they blow the station and get out quickly; Finn doesn’t even have to fire his blaster.  When they make it back to base, Leia looks grimly hopeful.  Reports filter in: they lost one bomber speeding away from a successful run, but the second and third units see lighter casualties on their side and heavier on the other than they’d projected.  It’s more good news than anyone had hoped for.

Rey shows up near dawn and runs straight to Finn.  “Have you heard from - ”

“No,” Finn says shortly, turning back to the comm lines he’s volunteered to monitor.  Rey disappears, then returns with two cups of caf and settles in next to Finn to watch the feeds.  There’s chatter about systems going down across the First Order fleet, ships disappearing from scattered sectors, voices cutting in and out and then, finally, _finally_  - 

“ _Command, this is Black Leader reporting in_ ,” Poe says, and Rey puts a hand on Finn’s arm and squeezes.  Everything speeds up after that; there’s debriefs with the other units, weapons to re-stock, people clapping each other on the back and talking animatedly about the next mission, the next target, and by the time Finn sneaks up the stairs and drops his head into his hands and takes a second to just _breathe_ , he’s exhausted.  He lays back, just for a minute; he’s not gonna _sleep_ , he’s just - 

“Hey, buddy.”

Finn blinks.  The light in the room has gone yellow; it’s nearly midday.   “Hey,” he rasps.  

“Can I - ” Poe says, a little uncertainly, and Finn’s stomach twists.

“Yeah,” Finn says, “of course, I - ”

“Cool,” Poe says, and slides into the room like he’s still not sure he’s welcome.  

“You didn’t get killed,” Finn says.

“I’m as surprised as you are,” Poe says.  He stands in the middle of the room awkwardly.  “Heard your unit did great.”

Finn shrugs.  “Wasn’t too hard.  They were distracted by some dumbass Resistance pilot who flew straight into a trap.”

“Imagine that,” Poe says.  “Look, I’m sorry I - ”

“I know,” Finn says, “I know, I’m - ”

“No, _really_ ,” Poe says, “seriously, I’m bad at this stuff - ”

“I noticed,” Finn says, and Poe laughs.  “It’s not like I know what I’m doing either, man.  I’m just trying to - ”

“Yeah,” Poe says.  “Scoot over?”

Finn stares at him, open-mouthed, and then slides until his back is against the wall.  Poe toes his shoes off and gets into bed, shimmying under the covers until he’s next to Finn, not quite touching all the way from knee to hip to shoulder.

“You were wrong, before,” Poe says.  

Finn can feel the heat radiating off him.  “About what?”

“I do know what I want,” Poe says.  

“Oh,” Finn says.

“Yeah.” 

“That’s cool.”

They stare at each other, and then Poe tilts his head and leans forward and presses his lips to Finn’s quickly, just once, like it’s a question, even though Finn’s pretty sure he’s already told him all the answers.

“Yeah?” Poe says.

“Finally,” Finn breathes, and Poe laughs.


End file.
